CABLES AND CABLE ACCESSORIES
Richard Lungmuss tells RTM what Network Rail is doing to address the problem of cable theft.
C
able theft is one of the most seri- ous issues affecting the rail indus- try. Every year it costs Network
Rail millions of pounds in delays, repairs and replacement copper cable.
The crime is being driven by extremely high demand for copper in emerging econ- omies which has driven up the price. This has led to an increase in both the amount of copper being stolen and the sophistica- tion of the gangs often responsible.
Network Rail has been working hard to address this issue for many years and Richard Lungmuss, one of its route direc- tors, has been on the front line of the cable theft wars.
He explained: “The price of copper – and therefore the incidents of cable theft - had been at a fi ve year low. I expressed a con- cern that the price of copper would rise and it has.
“So despite Network Rail putting a number of measures in place, cable theft in 2010 continued to rise and this becomes clear when you compare the fi gures – from January to the end of October 2009, we’d had around 200 incidents which had caused about 59,000 minutes of delay, costing the railway on the London North East route around £1.4 million.
74 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 11
Above: Trap devices spray thieves with forensic material that can be traced by police and is incredibly diffi cult to remove.
“In 2010, we had more than double that amount of incidents of cable theft or van- dalism to cables, which is akin to theft. This caused over 100,000 minutes of delay which has cost us around £3.4 million.”
The main demand for copper is coming from China and other emerging econo- mies.
Lungmuss explained: “We know that it takes about ten years to set up a copper mine. There are few new copper mines coming on line. Although we have heard that Afghanistan is quite rich in mineral copper, no mines will be coming on line shortly.
Right: The SmartWater ‘traps’ in action
“This means there is a fairly fi nite amount of copper in the world and people will have to go to existing copper resources to get it. That is really concerning, not only to our- selves but also to the likes of the telecom- munications industry and power supply companies. This is a national problem and
has been recognised as such by both the police and the Government.”
So what is Network Rail doing to address this issue?
Lungmuss said: “We have taken quite a few steps to harden our copper resources. A good example of this is a new signal- ling project taking place in the North East where we have been burying it, which we believe has been successful. We are also taking troughing and fi lling it with foam and then gluing the concrete lid to the troughing. We know this is successful be- cause as we are conducting this work, of- fences tend to happen right on the edge of where that work is taking place.
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